Finding names and faces – Vietnam, 1967, and my dad

My dad served for 24 years in the Army, and was a combat veteran of World War II. He loved the Army, but was tortured by his memories and the wounds he received fighting as an infantryman with the 85th Infantry Division. He committed suicide when I was 19 years old, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in section 59, grave 1300. I’ve only been to visit a few times over the years, but I always feel closer to my dad at Arlington than I ever did when he was alive.

Although he tried many times after his retirement, my dad never really found a place in civilian life. I think it’s safe to say he couldn’t readjust to what he had survived during combat in Italy. I’ve thought about it so much over the decades, and to me, my dad was a textbook example of “He was never the same when he came back from the war.”

I’ve often wondered what made my dad reenlist in 1945 when 99% of the wartime draftees wanted nothing more than to get out of the Army and go home. Maybe my dad felt there was no home left to go back to? It might have been that the Army offered him a refuge of some kind, but I’ll never really know.

When I was a little kid in early 1960, my family got transferred to Buedingen, Germany, where my dad served with the 3rd Armored Division. He had recently gotten busted in rank from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment for fighting and was assigned as a tank commander in Delta Troop, 3rd Squadron, 12th Cavalry, which was the divisional reconnaissance squadron.

This is a picture of my dad I found in my mom’s things after she died in 1994. She had neatly written the month and year on the back. I don’t know what day in September this photo was taken. But on 2 September 1960, my dad’s unit suffered the worst training accident in the history of the US Army Europe. 3/12 Cav had just arrived at Grafenwoehr Training Area for tank gunnery, among the most important training events for armored units.

They were in Camp Kasserine, a cantonment area for units training at Graf. My mom told me the story many years later. My dad and his buddies were standing in line waiting to turn in their weapons at the arms room tent. He was standing next to his best friend when an 8-inch artillery round exploded right on top of the tent. Eighteen Soldiers died in the blast, including dad’s friend. My mom told me he was cut in half. 28 more Soldiers were injured. Somehow, my dad survived, although my mom said he’d gotten scratched up and hurt his shoulder. She also told me he never got over that experience.

When I was a kid, I asked my dad many times about what he did in the war, but he never said a word about it. Probably like most children of combat veterans, I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. My dad lived the war every night and probably the last thing he wanted was to try and explain it to me. And of course, I knew nothing about the accident at Graf.

For me, I believe with all my heart that my dad was a casualty of World War II and of that explosion at Graf in 1960. You can’t find his name on any memorial, but a part of him died fighting against the Germans in 1944-45. I don’t know how much was left after the explosion, but I feel like my dad spent a great deal of time after he retired walking among ghosts. My family lived through it all, every night. The battles in Italy, the explosion – they were always with him, and with us.

I only finally understood, at least in part, after experiencing combat myself in Iraq and Kuwait. I really wanted to talk about everything with my dad after I got home from my war in 1991, but it was too late, much too late. For many years, I put it behind me because, frankly, it was too damned hard to think about. And then on Memorial Day of 2018, a most unexpected thing occurred. On my dad’s unit page on Facebook, the son of one of his wartime battle buddies posted this picture.

My Facebook acquaintance’s’s father was a photography buff and carried his camera throughout World War II. He took at least a hundred clear photos of his battle buddies, which his son posted in stages to the unit page. My dad was in the same company, but they served in different platoons. Over the course of several months, I checked often to see if my dad was present in any of the pictures. This was one of the last pictures the son posted, and he didn’t know who anyone in the photo was. His father had died several years previously and didn’t write any names on the back.

When I saw this picture from 1945, I knew in an instant that it was my dad looking out at me through history. It felt as if all the years of pain and sadness had fallen away. I was so moved that I began to cry. It felt great to find my dad by pure luck after so long, and on a day filled with so much meaning. I’ve always believed strongly that he was a casualty of World War II, although it took him a long time to die of the invisible scars he bore. Finding him on Memorial Day only reinforced that belief for me.

So if I can help a single family reconnect with their trooper, it’ll be worth it. If one of our Blackhorse brothers can find a picture of himself, it’ll be worth it. If I can add texture to the proud history of the 11th United States Cavalry, that’s enough. If you can help, please leave a message on this article.

Some of these photos have appeared before on one or another website, but never in context. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever made a concerted effort to figure out who all of these Soldiers were. With perseverance and a healthy dose of luck, I plan to do more research into the photo collection, and post the names of troopers as I discover them. Please check back, because it’s an exciting and important project.

Allons, never forget,

Mark
E 2/11 ACR, 1985-89

Notes

1. The cited passage is from Life Magazine, 2 June 1967, page 70.
2. I am indebted to my Blackhorse buddy Don Snedeker for all of his help in writing about the 11th ACR.
3. Without the hard work of the 11th Armored Cavalry’s Veterans of Vietnam & Cambodia, it would be impossible to identify any of these troopers. I am so thankful as a historian for their labors in creating and updating the regiment’s Vietnam rosters.